Here in the San Fransisco Bay Area, there are a ton of good, great, awesome restaurants. Given that, the food damned well better be worth the price. California is the land of BYOB (for those of you who do not live in the state, it doesn’t come close to making up for the earthquakes, fires or floods, so don’t even THINK about moving here). As such, we normally bring our own. A restaurant staff must handle this with class and not turn up its nose like a bottle of Topolos was just spilled on the floor. Corkage (a whole topic of conversation on its own) should also be reasonable and the glassware should be serviceable, even though we often bring our own glassware. What can we say? We’re geeks.

The best compliment we received was from Spiedini in Walnut Creek. The wait-staff there told us “for most people going out to dinner is something to do before doing something else, for you guys the going-out-for-dinner is what you do.”